"If my conjecture prove right; if the Memoirs which they are about to publish under the name of Franklin should be mutilated; if the first part, so essential to readers capable of feeling and judging, should be suppressed, I shall applaud myself for having preserved it; and the world will be obliged to me for having enabled them to follow the early developments of the genius, and the first exertions of the sublime and profound mind of a man who afterward penetrated the mystery of electricity and discovered the secret measures of despotism-who preserved the universe from the ravages of thunder, and his native country from the horrors of tyranny!

"If I am accidentally mistaken, if the life of Franklin should appear entire, the public will still have the advan tage of anticipating the interesting part of a history which it has long and impatiently expected.

"The principal object proposed by the American philosopher in writing these Memoirs was, to instruct posterity and amuse his own leisure hours. He has permitted his ideas to flow at the will of his memory and his heart, without ever making any effort to disguise the truth, notwithstanding it is not always very flattering to his selflove-but I here stop; it belongs to Franklin to speak for himself.

"It will be easily perceived that I have preserved as much as possible the ease and simplicity of his style in my translation. I have not even affected to correct the negligence of his language, or to clothe his sentiments with a gaudy dress, for which they have no manner of occasion; I should have been afraid of bereaving the work of one of its principal ornaments.

"As these Memoirs reach no farther than his marriage,

I have made use of other materials in order to complete so interesting a history, and I have also added a number of anecdotes and remarks relative to this philosophical American. THE EDITOR."

Querard attributes this translation to a Dr. Jaques Gibelin, who, it appears, was a naturalist of some repute; had been occasionally in England; had translated from

* Querard, La France Littéraire.

M. de Senarmont seems to have been under the impression that this translation was made by M. le Veillard. This M. le Veillard himself most distinctly denied in a note which he communicated to the "Journal de Paris," in 1791, No. 83, of which the following is a translation:

"PASSY, near Paris, 21st March, 1791.

"Shortly before his death, Mr. Franklin sent me the Memoirs of his life, written by himself, and I have only deferred the publication of them out of respect for his family, and especially for Wm. Temple Franklin, his grandson, to whom his grandfather has left all his manuscripts. He proposes to make a complete edition, as well in French as in English, in which he will insert my translation. He is now in England, occupied with this work, and is expected in France, in a few days, to complete it.

"Buisson, a bookseller in the Rue Hautefeuille, has published a volume in 8vo., entitled Mémoires de la Vie Privée de Benjamin Franklin, écrits par lui-même et addressées à son fils. The first 156 pages of this volume contain in effect the commencement of the Memoirs of Dr. Franklin, almost entirely conforming to the manuscript which I possess. I do not know by what means the translator has procured them, but I declare and think it ought to be known that he did not have them from me; that I had no part in the translation; that this fragment, which ends in 1730, is scarcely a third of what I have, which only comes down to 1757, and which consequently does not terminate this work, the remainder of which is in the hands of Mr. W. T. Franklin, who will plan his edition so that the complete Memoirs of Franklin will form one or two volumes, which may be obtained separately. "LE VEILLARD.”

English philosophical writers, Priestly among others, and had made an abridgment of the Phil. Trans. of the Royal Society, &c. How he obtained possession of the English manuscript is a mystery which will probably never be solved.*

The following letter from William Temple Franklin, in London, to M. le Veillard, was written in the spring of 1791, but subsequent to the appearance of the French translation. He represents himself as still engaged upon the Life and works of his grandfather, which he pretended would be ready for the press in a few weeks:

"LONDON, 22 April, 1791.

"I received last night, my dear friend, your letter of the 12th inst. I am as sensible as you can be of the advantage that would result from my being at present in

*The relations of literary comity which must have subsisted between Gibelin and many of Franklin's English friends whose works he had translated, naturally leads to the suspicion that the copy promised Mr. Vaughan, if ever made and sent, may in some way have fallen into Gibelin's hands. If so, Mr. Vaughan must have construed the Doctor's injunction, not to permit "a copy of the MS. to be taken for any purpose whatever," to have been removed by his death. If such was the case, however, why did he not produce an English edition?

In a notice which Cabanis prepared shortly after the news of Dr. Franklin's death reached Paris, the following allusion is made to this edition of the Memoirs :

"Benjamin Franklin, s'est peint lui-même dans des Memoires dont il n'a paru jusq'ici qu'un fragment; mais ce sont ses ennemis ou des pensionnaires du cabinet de Saint James qui l'ont publié. Ils y ont joint de plates notes auxquelles la famille aurait dû repondre plus tôt par la publication du reste de l'ouvrage. En attendant qu'elle remplisse ce devoir, nous allons rassembler ici quelques traits, que nous avons recueillis de la bouche même de Franklin dans une commerce intime de plusieurs années.”—(Euvres de Cabanis, vol. v. p. 221.

Paris, and I can assure you I am equally desirous of it. But business of the last importance, and that interested me personally, has hitherto detained me here; that, however, is now happily completed, and I am at present constantly occupied in the arrangement of my late grandfather's papers, which were left in the greatest disorder; whether I am able to complete this or not, I shall certainly leave London for Paris in the course of a fortnight. But my wish is, if possible, to finish this, and my bargain with the booksellers, before I set off, that I may not be obliged to return hither merely on that account. Were it only the Life, it would already have been done; but I wish a complete edition of his works to appear at the same time, and as I have no assistance, the necessary preparations are very laborious. I am very sorry that any part of the Life should have already appeared in France-however imperfect, which I understand it is. I have endeavored, and I hope effectually, to put a stop to a translation appearing here.

"Adieu, my dear friend; all will, I hope, go well. With my best affections to all your family, I am, as ever

and for ever,

"Sincerely yours,

W. T. FRANKLIN."

William Temple's apprehensions of an English translation were not without foundation.

Strange as it is that the first version of any portion of these Memoirs should have appeared in a foreign tongue, it is yet more remarkable that the first English version should have been, as it was, a translation from the French.

* Le Veillard Collection.

B

It appeared in London in 1793,* and was not only the only English version in print until 1817, but continues to this day to be republished by some of the largest houses, not only in Europe, but in America, under the impression that it is both genuine and complete. What measures were taken, if any, to prevent the appearance of an English translation have not transpired.

William Temple's expectations of getting to Paris in a few weeks do not seem to have been realized; for, from the following letter it appears that nearly two months had elapsed and he was still in London, but hoped to set out for France before the end of the month. A speculation, from which he had realized £7,000, is assigned as the cause of his delay. He professes to be much distressed at what M. le Veillard had suffered-in what way is not disclosed-from his not arriving in Paris:

"LONDON, 14 June, 1791.

"I am much distressed, my dear friend, at what you say you suffer from my not arriving in Paris. I have been wishing to be there as much as you could wish to see me, but I could not possibly think of leaving this, while a business I had undertaken was pending for which

"The Private Life of the late Benjamin Franklin, LL.D., late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to France, etc., etc., etc., originally written by himself, and now translated from the French. To which are added some account of his public life, a variety of anecdotes concerning him, by MM. Brissot, Condorcet, Rochefoucault, Le Roy, etc., etc., and the Eulogium of M. Fauchet, Constitutional Bishop of the Department of Calvados and a Member of the National Convention. Eripuit fulmen Cœlo, mox sceptra tyrannis.—TURGOT. A Paris ce grand homme dans notre ancien regime serait resté dans l'obscurité ; comment employer le fils d'un Chandelier.”—LE ROY.

London: Printed for J. Parsons, No. 31 Pater Noster Row. 1793.